PONDering

I am thinking about putting in a tiny pond somewhere in the garden...
So far there are 3 possible places a pond can be put in without too much problems.
One is right next to the chicken run, there is a 2x2 meter spot that is not used.. I could lead the rain water from the coop there. But maybe chickens would eat any tiny life forms that want to live in the pond (such as insects, frogs etc)
The other place is somewhere between the saplings area and the backyard slope. I could use the 3 levels that will be put there to create nice tiny waterfalls and stuff. Maybe put a little solar pump there too and some fish?
The third place is next to the bushy area, near the compost bins.

I could remove the right half of the bushes and put a pond there instead.

Not sure yet... maybe no pond at all.
The question is what I want it for. Originally I was thinking of having fish there, but keeping fish in such tiny pond means no insects or frogs, it is just nice to look at but I also have to handle filtering and lots of other crap. So I am leaning towards a no-fish pond.
I definitely want the pond to be inhabited by frogs and dragonflies. Not sure if it is possible to have both... I have seen native frogs and dragonflies a lot where we live so they should just come if there is a pond. Let's investigate and think a bit more and see what comes out.

By the way, my back pain is not better. I went to the clinic again today and asked to see a different doctor. This one was the youngest so far, looked 14.
After the accident, the first doctor I saw in Chiba was in his 50s. The second one I saw was maybe 40. The third one before this one was real young, early 30s at most. And now this one.
All of them worked the same way. This one also scrolled as quick as he could through my scans and said nothing is broken, take some pills and get better please. When I told him I want to fix what is wrong rather than living with pills, and that I have taken pills for 3 weeks already, and asked him how long more I should expect this pain, he shrugged and said I dunno, these kind of injury usually take up to 2 months to get better. But that it varies from person to person. He also said that if I don't take pills my brain will eventually get used to the pain, and I will not notice the signs my body is giving me. (Uh... yeah right)
Interesting was that he didn't even check my back, or legs or anything. I just told him I was in pain, sitting on a chair. No examination.
He gave me more and stronger pills, and when I kept pushing him that I can't keep waiting with the pain, he said he would put me up for rehabilitation to do some exercises to get better faster.
Hmm... so he normally wants the patients to get better slowly, so he doesn't suggest them to do rehabilitation by himself? Weird.
Anyway, I went to the rehabilitation and got more attention and they listened to me more than all the 4 doctors put together. I will do the things they suggested and go there again next week.
If nothing gets better, I will go there and ask to see a different doctor. Just hope next one is not an infant.
   

Backyard preparations

So the date has been decided for the construction guys to level the backyard slope. Next Saturday they should be finished with everything. Last weekend they came by and measured with their laser thingie and dug a bit and roped in the area.

Men at work

I stood by worrying all the time that they would be knocking over one of my saplings...

Horizontal ropes show outline of where the 3 walls will be

The whole area looks so sad with all the dead grass. Of course it is winter, and as soon as the walls are up I will be planting flowers and shit I imagine, to make it look pretty.

I guess this will be the "Before" picture of the slope

I started removing a row of tiles form the backyard, to allow the soft and thick grass which I like to expand further in. Eventually I want to replace the tiles with grass. This type of grass is green all year long at seems. The tiles don't look so good, plus the base under them is not all flat it seems so when I walk on them they wiggle a lot. Also when it rains small puddles form in certain areas and gets real messy.

Backyard minus 1 row of tiles

I filled in the line where the tiles had been with soil so that the grass roots could get in there. It is pretty much clay under the tiles otherwise.

Backyard plus 1 row worth of soil

Let's give it some time and see what comes out. Also spent the whole Sunday cutting ALL of the mini bamboos on the front slope. I got all the tiny ones and big ones. I hope their roots rot in hell. Especially tough was the area between the bushes. I kind of started wanting to just cut the bushes too but I want to allow one more season to see what the bushes actually are. So far I am not impressed. They better give me something real pretty in spring or summer if they want to be kept.

I challenge you to find any mini bamboos here

It just hit me, all pictures of my garden are more brown that green....
Those tiles on the right side of the picture above are the same I removed from the backyard by the way. I will continues making a path between the raised beds like that, after a couple of rains they should be cleaner and more red than brown. 
Anyway, next I will continue flattening the bump in front of the green net.

See all the mini bamboos on the left half? That is what the right side looked like before

The mini bamboos on the bump will not be cut but will be pulled out with roots and all.

Spot the tiger

Hint: he is looking right at you

The other day I took Tora out in the garden and then fed the chickens and did some other stuff, and could not find Tora again. After looking all over for a while I finally noticed him sitting on top of the boundary stone and looking beyond the fence. As soon as I took out the camera to take a picture he heard me and jumped down.

Back pain

I have still lots of pain in my back and honestly the doctors did not really pay much attention to whether or not there was some damage done to my bones. The second doctor told me there were no damages, 10 seconds after he told me he was going to send me to take some X-rays and MRIs to see if there were any internal damages done. I told him that I have already taken all those scans, and that they are in the previous doctor's files of me. He opened the file (at this point 8 seconds had passed) and took a glance at the 60+ images (using the mouse wheel he could really flip through them ultra fast) and apparently decided they all looked normal.

I am not spineless

I have been looking at the scan pictures by myself but it is hard to know what is normal and what is not. I guess I figured that if there was a huge crack somewhere that the genius doctor missed in his 2 second glance, I could spot it myself.
But to be honest in almost every picture something looks kind of wrong to me.

I think I see a crack

For example, in above picture (viewpoint is from above, so the bottom is my back and left is left) of a cross section of my pelvis I can see a white line on the left side where I hurt. Is that line normal?

It's cool cause I can rotate it

The 3D scan looks whole, but I guess I have to take into account that it is a generated image based on cross section data, hence it just fills the gaps between and I should not expect to see cracks for example.
I don't know. I guess I just have to wait and hope it gets better, and if it doesn't after a couple of weeks, pay Dr. SmartAss another visit and ask him to actually look at the pictures this time.
My hand also hurts especially when I use it. (duh...)
The other day I was cutting mini bamboos with a scissor. Nothing hard, real easy task. Clip clip clip. Suddenly when I was in the middle of one of the clips a huge pain like electric shock went through my hand, arm and right side of my body.

Manos, hand of fate

Again, my scans look all normal to me, and I guess that kind of pain originates from the spine and neck, not the hand itself...
Here is my neck.

It all looks very fragile and like it could hurt a lot

And here is my knee just as a bonus

Just in case you are not grossed out already

Digging in the dirt

A Sunday morning later, the digging has proceeded a bit further.

Leveling the field

What takes time is removing the roots from the soil. The mini bamboo roots are easy enough as they are big and just tugging at them gives me a whole length. But the lawn roots covering the whole top soil are mush worse. They are interconnected but tiny and if I pull too hard most of it just remains in the dirt.
I got lots of seeds and hopefully will be able to plant them soon. I got japanese pumpkin, 3 types of tomato, yellow paprika, eggplant, asparagus, corn and sunflower. I also have left lots of seeds from before.
Here is an overview of the garden

From window of second floor

I want to even the whole field first, except for maybe around the saplings and the trees. Plant kabocha and berry bushes on the slope to the right of the bush just visible on right side of the picture. Still not sure if I should keep that bush or not. It had some nice flowers last year I think. But I will cut down all the mini bamboo that shoots out anywhere.
Then I will remove the tiles from the backyard, and also from the path leading around the house, and use them to make paths and borders in the garden between the beds. No more slipping around or risk falling...
As for the backyard, I want to allow the thick grass expand a bit further, maybe half a meter, as it does a good job of not allowing the weeds through, and it is pretty and feels nice to touch. And as for the path around the house, I will cover it with marble stones.
Generally I will plant small salad leafs all over, especially between the saplings I suppose. Not sure what kind of things can be grown there... maybe I will let the strawberries spread. As for beds, I will have one long bed going along the fence (on top right of the picture, behind the tree and the compost bins), one bed in front of the strawberries, and so on... with paths between them. Actually it is hard to imagine before I have done the leveling. But something like this I suppose.

Sapling area to left. Blueberries are purple, compost is green

Even in this picture there seems so be problem getting through past the cherry saplings. I dunno.
I have to also think about leading water from the high point where the chickens are to the right places between the beds.

Good evening

Spent a couple of hours carefully removing dirt from a high place and try to even out the garden a bit, as planned earlier. Didn't get far because I had to be very careful and slow due to my back still aching from the crash.
I did clean out the slope next to the front gate from bamboo leaves. Basically cut everything bamboo that was above ground. Really hope the roots give up, but probably not because the rhizomes are real long and also run under the neighbor's plot so as far as the neighbor has some bamboo leaves above ground the roots will get energy to sprout leaves in my plot.
Best is to just plant stuff there and cut the bamboo shoots once in a while.
Also there was a bit of empty dirt plot near the front door where I have now spread lots of oat seeds, so Tora can chew grass when he is out.
The retaining walls on slope of backyard will probably be done around end of February.
Also, I am thinking about replacing all the tiles around the house with small rocks. Maybe.

Before I started

After, the shadows indicate a few hours passed

I covered the dirt I moved to even out the ground with black plastic mulch sheet to avoid it getting all dried up and sandy. This is just the beginning before my back pain got to much. The idea is to remove everything in the strip to the left of what I started and spread it over the garden below to gain more land area so to say.
When I am done, probably the compost barrel to the left will be buried in 10 cm more ground.

Valentine

Chika got me lots of cute yummy things, plus something from Madam Shinko (Huh huh)

Don't eat meeee!

Naughty sweets

Oh, by the way, big FAIL! All the eggs in the incubator turned out to be duds. Live and learn I guess...

Car accident

OK, so it has not been much activity. Only thing I did is to paint the inside of the coop where I saw mold had started to grow.
And the reason for me not doing much is that I could not. Too much pain. And the pain is because I got hit by a car.
I was riding my bicycle straight and the car was coming from opposite direction, and making a turn cutting in front of my path so to say. Luckily my speed was low as I was done checking for cars at the intersection, and had just started to ride the bike when the car came from nowhere and hit me on my right. His speed must have been high to appear so sudden and he didn't slow down for the turn, but only when he was about to hit me.
The bike was mangled, and I was super lucky to get away with bleeding knee (I used to be so good at gardening, then I took an arrow to the knee...), and bruised back and hands and legs.
Chika helped a lot with calling the police (they were completely useless as usual though) and the ambulance. Had to walk with crutches for a few days.Took copious number of MRI, X-ray and CT-scans, and the doctor said there was no fractures or broken things inside.
Amazing though how they can say that after literally glancing at the image for 1 second. Scary as shit. I kept asking though, if nothing is broken or there isn't even a hair thin fracture, how come I have so much pain? And they kept saying that I am just sore and it should be fine after a couple of weeks.
But I do recognize sore, and this is not sore. This is deep in the nerves and bones. Something is very off. I will wait for a month with the pain killers as they say and hope that it will heal itself. I really hope they are right.
Still wearing a back support because it hurts too much without it. Took a week off from work to be able to move. Today when I took the train to work I was in constant pain for the whole ride. No matter if I sit or stand, it hurt extra as it moved about.

Fixing stuff

Got my thumb out, finally, and fixed the last part of the net surrounding my garden, so now Tora can be safe. Or the world can be safe from him.

the net is now much higher. Also note 2 compost containers

Also finished the pipework around the chicken coop. All rain water is gathered and led to one spot now. I only have to figure out what to do with all that water. Maybe a mini pond for the chickens? Or perhaps a swale?
I also signed the contract to put up 3 levels with concrete retainers in the backyard where the big slope is. The guy who was here told me I don't even have to cut down all the trees on top. In fact he said it is better to keep them as they help keeping the ground together. Of course I knew that but I thought that was the whole idea with retaining walls, to not need the trees.
I am not a big fan of those trees. On top of requiring maintenance they also cast a huge shade over all of the garden.

Nothing can grow in this darkness

We shall see. Maybe I only cut down half of them. Or maybe I cut them down to half size.
I also managed to drop one of the eggs form the incubator when I was turning it. It landed softly on the cushion but still when I candled it I spotted a big crack.

There is life inside though...

It wasn't leaking or anything so I used some candle wax to seal the crack and put it back. All the eggs are being incubated as an experiment anyway so lets chance it.

Will any of them hatch?